medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Hildie Bingen is always of interest.
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Received: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 03:18:37 PM EDT
From: The Medieval Review <[log in to unmask]>
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Subject: TMR 12.08.02 Kienzle, Hildegard of Bingen, Homilies (Clark)
Kienzle, Beverly Mayne, trans. Hildegard of Bingen, <i>Homilies on
the Gospels</i>. Cistercian Studies Series, no. 241. Trappist, KY:
Cistercian Publications; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011.
Pp. xvii, 224. $29.95. ISBN: 9780879072414.
Reviewed by Anne L. Clark
University of Vermont
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The works of Hildegard of Bingen have benefitted from the labors of
editors and translators who have made most of her astonishing oeuvre
now available to scholars, students, and general readers. Beverly
Mayne Kienzle has contributed to both of these tasks: as co-editor of
Hildegard's <i>Expositiones evangeliorum</i> in Volume 226 of
<i>Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis</i> and as translator
of the same text, the book under review here. Kienzle's work on the
critical edition, her authorship of a monographic study of the text,
<i>Hildegard of Bingen and her Gospel Homilies: Speaking New
Mysteries</i> (Brepols, 2009), and her extensive expertise on medieval
sermons and preaching, position her to be the ideal translator of
Hildegard's biblical homilies.
Now known as one of Hildegard's "minor works," the <i>Expositiones
evangeliorum</i> is comprised of fifty-eight homilies on Gospel texts.
Kienzle's indispensible introduction to the text, which condenses the
deep scholarship in her monographic study, sketches the place of the
text in Hildegard's career. With the <i>Scivias</i> and the
<i>Symphonia</i> complete, Hildegard probably would have worked on the
<i>Expositiones</i> in tandem with completing her other major works.
Although the <i>Expositiones</i> share many themes with her visionary
works, and also evoke the style of visionary commentary of her last
major work, the <i>Liber Divinorum Operum</i>, the sermon collection
bears no claim to visionary experience or authority. Kienzle suggests
that the collection presumes Hildegard's visionary authority, which is
supported by its inclusion in the so-called Riesenkodex (Wiesbaden,
Hessische Landesbibliothek 2), which transmits all Hildegard's
writings considered inspired. On the other hand, Hildegard's
authority was rooted in her role as <i>magistra</i>, in which she
would have been expected to teach the nuns of Rupertsberg. Although
the first four sermons may have been preached to the monks of
Disibodenberg, the main collection is treated as part of Hildegard's
program of educating the nuns in her charge, a responsibility that did
not require visionary authority. But even in this role as
<i>magistra</i>, Hildegard does not foreground her own voice in the
text.
Drawing on her expertise on medieval sermons, Kienzle provides a
concise picture of monastic exegesis to fill out the picture of
Hildegard's education and to provide the intellectual context for her
exegetical work. Central to this picture is the Benedictine
liturgical life, especially the inclusion of patristic readings in the
ritual of nocturns, which served as the means of teaching generations
of monks and nuns basic contours of biblical interpretation. As in
her visionary works, Hildegard does not name her sources, but the
apparatus in the critical edition identifies many echoes of works by
Gregory the Great, Bede, and others. Kienzle also argues for
Hildegard's familiarity with Origen, perhaps mediated by other
exegetes such as Ambrose or Augustine. Most importantly, Hildegard
continued the practice of spiritual exegesis, of expounding the
spiritual meanings of the biblical texts, usually relegating the
literal stories of the Gospel to scaffolding for her own complex
dramas about salvation history or the interior struggle of the soul.
Kienzle also illuminates the distinctive style of Hildegard's work.
It falls within the broad category of progressive exegesis, that is,
phrase-by-phrase commentary on the biblical text, with some comments
focusing even on individual words. This progressive style stands in
contrast to more thematically structured sermons. But even though the
progressive style is traditional in monastic commentaries, Hildegard's
practice is more extreme than, for example, that of Bede or Gregory
the Great, who comment on larger sense units, such as whole verses or
even longer passages. Hildegard's progressive commentary goes hand in
hand with her spiritual exegesis: on the one hand, the Gospel text
remains the foundation for her development of her ideas, yet on the
other hand, its extreme fragmentation contributes to the larger
disappearance of its literal meaning.
As for the translation itself, the text presents unavoidable pitfalls
and difficult decisions about how best to present the translation.
Hildegard's Latin is difficult and often idiosyncratic in any case,
and the progressive style of homily seems to have encouraged her
untrammeled associative thinking. In order to facilitate
comprehension, Kienzle introduces each homily with the relevant
selection from the Gospel that is the basis of Hildegard's homily.
These Gospel pericopes are not found in the Latin text but without
them, the reader would have had to constantly resort to a New
Testament to have any sense of what Hildegard was referring to.
Kienzle also prints the glossed words or phrases together in larger
sense units of partial or full biblical verses. The initial full
Gospel story, the Gospel words being glossed, and words or phrases
from any biblical passage within the paragraphs are printed in italic
type to distinguish them from Hildegard's own words that are
commenting on them. The liturgical context, that is, the day on which
the particular Gospel passage would have been read, is also given.
Very helpful footnotes also clarify some of the ambiguities in
Hildegard's thinking, and sometimes offer comparisons to relevant
patristic exegesis. And finally, Kienzle carefully explains her
complicated use of quotation marks to distinguish the various voices
within the text. All of these aspects of the presentation of the
translation make the text more accessible for an otherwise unaided
reading.
But the undeniable flow enabled by Kienzle's translation does have its
tradeoffs, as there must be with any translation. Hildegard rarely
comments on more than two or three words at a time, and so in the
Latin text, the biblical words are embedded in homily. Keinzle's
regrouping of the Gospel words (and in effect extracting them from the
commentary) not only makes Hildegard's expository style less obvious,
but it also makes it more difficult to appreciate the levels of
meaning that she is holding together in tension in the homily. At
some points Kienzle does offer more direct rendering of Hildegard's
progressive style (the beginning of Homily 55 is one of the most
consistent examples), presumably because the interweaving of literal
and spiritual meanings was more comprehensible or more easily
translatable in these sections. In general, I think that it takes
more work for the reader to understand Hildegard's ideas when the
biblical prop or scaffold of the ideas is set apart from the
interpretation, with the effect that the symbolic meaning is even more
abstracted from the story. This response, however, may be due to my
experience of consistently comparing the translation to the Latin
text, which is not how the translation will usually be read.
The question of how best to present this complex text raises questions
about Hildegard's larger enterprise. Hildegard's extreme
fragmentation of the literal text might suggest its near irrelevance
to the more important spiritual meanings she lays over it, and also,
her greater freedom in interpreting the text. For example, Gregory
the Great comments on the parable about a powerful man sending out his
servant to invite many to his banquet (Luke 14:16-24) by explaining
the man as the Lord who sends out his preachers to call everyone to
the final banquet of heavenly refreshment. In the first of her two
expositions of this parable, Hildegard explains the man as Adam who
foresees the recalcitrance of his descendants and calls upon them to
toil to cultivate the earth (Homily 39). In her second exposition,
the powerful man is the person "full of the desire for pleasures," who
sends out his servant Vanity who calls those like himself to enjoy
their desires (Homily 40), a far cry from Gregory's more predictable
equation of the powerful man with God. And yet, clearly the story
does pose some constraints, and Hildegard finally takes into account
the moral threat implicit in the parable: even Vanity becomes part of
a larger moral economy that will enforce bitterness and sorrow upon
the concupiscent.
Hildegard's spiritual interpretation also points to a paradoxical
element in her text. Many of the homilies are about the Incarnation.
A celebration of the uniting of divinity and flesh is a central theme,
often elaborated by emphasizing the inability of the Old Testament
(seemingly personified) to articulate such a possibility. Yet for all
Hildegard's interest in Incarnation, she shows very little interest in
the stories about Jesus as the incarnated one. The Gospel pericopes
are mostly about scenes from the life of Jesus, but in her commentary,
Jesus is usually a symbol for something else. So for example, in
homilies on Luke 5:1-11, where Jesus instructs Peter to take a boat
out into deep water where they then gather a great abundance of fish,
Jesus is glossed as God or as Fortitude (Homilies 43-45). So although
incarnational theology is often generally associated with an interest
in the historical Jesus, Hildegard's incarnational focus in the
homilies is much more theoretical, much more about the <i>idea</i> of
Incarnation and its overcoming of dichotomies (human/divine;
spirit/flesh) than about Incarnation as part of an historical life.
Other intriguing Hildegardian ideas can be traced in these homilies:
her concern with the nature of creation and her focus on God as
creator; her interest in characterizing the nature of true prophecy,
vision, revelations, and dreams; her use of gendered imagery to
express her understanding of both psychological and cosmic verities;
her concept of the animating force of <i>viriditas</i> or "greenness."
In bringing her extensive learning to this translation, Kienzle has
provided an important tool for scholars and students in the continuing
study of Hildegard of Bingen. Although "preacher" has been one of the
many roles associated with Hildegard, this book enables a much more
nuanced understanding of Hildegard as an exegete, as a creator of
biblical interpretation, the only medieval woman known to have engaged
in systematic biblical commentary.
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